Two women in unrelated cases each were sentenced to a year in federal prison for stealing family members’ government aid, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver.

Former Steamboat Springs resident Kimberly Ann Stenerson, 61, placed her 92-year-old mentally challenged aunt in a nursing home in Mexico in 1999 and eventually told investigators she did not visit her aunt after 2002.

But Stenerson had told the Social Security Administration she was taking care of her aunt’s needs in California, instead used the money on herself, prosecutors said.

Ten years later, in August 2009, the nun in charge of the nursing home in Mexico had applied for Social Security assistance for the elderly woman, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

” When Stenerson discovered this, she contacted a Social Security Administration office in Colorado, and falsely reported that her aunt was visiting relatives in Mexico for a few months and was scheduled to be back in Colorado in a few days, and someone in Mexico was trying to fraudulently gain control of her benefits,” prosecutors stated in a media release this afternoon.

In the other case, metro Denver resident Stephanie Sanchez, 38, obtained a total of $16,562 in benefits for her two children, but instead spent all the money on herself, prosecutors said.

“In doing this, Sanchez falsely stated that her children lived with her, when, in fact, neither child lived with her at any relevant time,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office stated.